Further government legislation is rarely welcomed with open arms across the business community so it would come as no surprise if many big employers in Scotland and the rest of the UK were not positively embracing the new Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) being rolled out next year by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

However, in practice ESOS presents a real opportunity to deliver significant benefits to business through reducing energy consumption and costs.

ESOS is the UK Government’s approach to implementing new EU legislation on energy efficiency aimed at larger companies, designed to get them focusing on energy use in three key operational areas: buildings, industrial processes and transport.

Any organisation with more than 250 employees, €50 million annual turnover (circa £40m) or a balance sheet exceeding €43m (circa £34m) will be required to carry out an energy audit by December 2015.

Most public sector organisations will be exempt, although they may well be covered by a requirement within the same EU legislation, for them to upgrade three per cent of their building stock on an annual basis.

Following the energy audit firms will need to put in place an action plan to ensure they are using best practice to enhance energy efficiency.

While DECC has set out an aim of saving UK businesses £1.6bn a year by reducing costs through this initiative, many companies and organisations will view it as yet another frustrating level of compliance amongst a growing mountain of regulatory bureaucracy.

The fact that ESOS is being implemented in addition to the Carbon Reduction Commitment will likely add fuel to the fire.

DECC has tried to minimise duplication of effort but it is anticipated that ESOS rules will require some level of time and resources to work out in what is an already crowded policy landscape.

However, despite these issues, those companies and organisations which are required to comply should see ESOS as what it is intended to be, an opportunity for business to maximise energy efficiency and ultimately reduce costs.

This initiative is a relatively light standard and there’s plenty of flexibility on routes to compliance.

Companies, for example can use historic audits back to December 2011 as a substitute for the first phase of the scheme, so long as they comply with minimum requirements.

Companies that have implemented an energy management system accredited to ISO 50001 can simply use their accreditation certificate as evidence of compliance.

Those required to comply could also chose to simply do their ESOS audit and leave it at that as there’s no requirement to implement the findings.

I believe this would be a mistake however as the opportunity which this new initiative presents is much bigger than simply ticking a box.

Our energy experts have found ways and means to cut between 10 and 30 per cent of energy use in nearly every audit we’ve carried out.

In many cases it’s the simple things that can save the most.

General Electric found that their London office’s heating was coming on in the middle of the night. By adjusting that the company saved £60,000 a year – this solution required 30 minutes time with no capital cost.

Within WSP, we found the air conditioning for our new Birmingham office had been wired outside the building management system.

By stopping that from running on a 24/7 basis we saved our property team £20,000 per year for next to no cost.

In reality many businesses will be already be auditing their energy use.

It’s somewhat surprising that any large company needs regulation to analyse a cost which is key for operational managers and is becoming an increasing focus within boardrooms.

This also comes at a time when commercial electricity prices have risen by 88 per cent in the past decade and are forecast by DECC to increase by a further 55 per cent over the next one.

For those companies which do want to take their energy audit seriously there is further good news in that there will be a minimum technical standard for the audits as well as Government approved accreditation schemes for ESOS Lead Assessors.

This means the profession won’t be dumbed down, nor impacted by an influx of ‘have a go’ opportunists.

More than half of the organisations that we are speaking to on ESOS already say they believe it will provide a framework which will deliver energy and costs savings for their business.

Far from being frustrating and bureaucratic, ESOS could become a very beneficial energy saving tool.